


Like a Tool on a Shelf

by MetaAllu



Category: DCU, DCU - Comicverse
Genre: First Kiss, First Love, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 00:18:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MetaAllu/pseuds/MetaAllu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Damian and Colin are idiots and Dick gets very old.  Rating because Dick is a pottymouth.  Written because <a href="http://tealgeezus.tumblr.com/">tealgeezus</a> got me into this pairing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Tool on a Shelf

When they first meet, Damian categorizes Colin as a tool. He puts him on a shelf and forgets that he exists except for when he's needed. Five years later, at fifteen years old, Damian tries to remember what that was like. He tries not to give a damn as Colin recoils like Damian's betrayed him. He tries to cling to the feeling of chapped, open lips.

" _I'mnotgay_ ," Colin blurts, like it's vitally important, like that's the thing that matters in this situation, not Damian's feelings or the way he can feel his cheeks flaming up with shame. Damian clenches his teeth, bites his tongue and holds back the urge to spit back that he isn't either. 

He gets up because he doesn't know what he'll do if he doesn't. He doesn't say he's sorry because he's not, because the look on Colin's face doesn't matter. He forces himself to think of Colin as a tool, and when he comes back with juice and crackers, he acts like nothing happened. 

* 

He means to tell Grayson that it's none of his business; instead he cries into his shoulder. 

* 

"You have a really nice smile," Colin says, two years later while they both lie on Damian's bed, underage and drunk on cheap wine. 

"Fuck off," Damian answers, and his eyes slide shut. He feels the bed shift as Colin sits up, hears him swallow a mouthful of wine, and Damian can imagine the way he looks — moonlit with his head tilted back, all long limbs and stupid sheepdog bangs, cheeks flushed with alcohol. 

Damian's learned to watch, to trace over every crease and pore with his eyes, but to be sure not to touch. He's grown a lot in two years, and certainly a lot in seven. He knows better than to think of Colin as a tool, now; but also he knows better than to think of him as anything permanent or important. 

He's learned to remember Colin's smile and the way he lowers his lashes and his cheeks flush when a pretty girl looks his way. He's learned to take away the pretty girl and the row of lockers behind them, and it's more than enough fodder for his unhealthy fantasies. At night he bites his pillow and chokes on Colin's name. 

* 

They graduate from college the same year because Colin's taking a three-year program and Damian's is six. 

In their final year Damian is Colin's TA and they spend late nights getting drunk on his father's whiskey — dust-covered bottles and colourful plastic cups, stashed away in a cupboard (Not that Damian's father doesn't know anyway, but he doesn't say anything, and that's what matters.) — and debating decreasingly sensible politics. 

They graduate and Damian wants to move away because he's too old to be Robin and he needs to get Colin out from under his skin; but then Colin looks at him from under his lashes, with colour in his cheeks, and asks if he wants to get an apartment together. 

Damian is — he ponders as he lowers a box of his things to the floor of his new bedroom, and listens to Colin thank Drake and his boyfriend profusely for helping them move in — an idiot. 

* 

Colin's a mechanic. He works odd hours and sometimes he comes home dead on his feet and goes to bed without a word. Other times he doesn't come home at all, and Damian wakes up in a dead silent house without the smells of breakfast or Colin singing along to the latest pop music on the radio, his voice sweet and low— a blessing of puberty. The silence is something hauntingly familiar, but far away enough that Damian shakes it off, makes coffee and cereal, and goes to work. 

One day Colin brings home a laughing woman with a shock of dyed red hair and a ten thousand watt smile. Damian watches them kiss on the doorstep. A year later, Damian is twenty-six, and he watches Colin get down on one knee with grease streaked on his cheek. He sits in the pews at their wedding, and when the preacher says If there is any person can show just cause why they may not be joined together – let them speak now or forever hold their peace, he bites his tongue until he tastes blood. 

Colin moves out and Damian wakes to an achingly familiar silence. He makes coffee and cereal, and grows bitter. 

* 

Dick helps him sell the apartment with vicious efficiency of a cattle auctioneer, and Damian watches their apartment go to the slaughter house via wrecking ball, then packs his bags and moves back into the manor. Damian learns to cook, and Dick ambushes him in the mornings, pestering him while he makes breakfast. 

Damian learns different ways to measure flour, and how to crack eggs without getting shells in the batter. He reorganizes the kitchen and snaps at Dick when he puts something in the wrong place. He also snaps when Dick wolf whistles at him, gropes him, plays footsie with him, or walks around naked; but there's no venom in it, not that there ever had been before. Dick really doesn't look fifty. He does start wearing a bathrobe, though. 

One morning, Damian throws a wooden spoon at Dick's head, and Dick retaliates by covering Damian's face in a handful of flour. He gasps around it, laughing in near-hysterics, and then his tears track through the flour and along the length of his throat. 

Dick holds him while the pancakes burn, and they have coffee and cereal for breakfast. 

* 

She leaves him and takes half of all he owns along with the kids. He ends up on their doorstep like a stray dog, and Dick stands straighter than he has in years, eyes dark and defiant. 

Damian asks him if he'd like a cup of coffee; Colin asks if he wants to get a place together. 

Dick refuses to help him pack. 

* 

"Let me make breakfast," Damian says while Colin tries to make bacon and put on a tie for his job interview at the same time. 

"All you know how to make is pancakes," Colin teases, smiling brilliantly, his tie crooked and too loose. 

Damian hits him with a wooden spoon and fixes his tie. 

* 

They get a small house in the nice part of town, and Colin has a job with better hours. Damian spends the summer rearranging his lesson plans and eating cheap chinese food on the sofa with Colin. He complains that it's greasy and disgusting, but Colin takes joy in feeding him overcooked chow mein noodles while he tries to fit John E. Amoore between Adrian John Brown and Francis Crick, so he tries not to grumble enough to make Colin stop, and develops a taste for overcooked noodles. 

It's a Saturday in August when they lay in the backyard as the sun sets and get fantastically drunk off of cheap beer. They haven't done it in years, and Damian's getting too old for stupid teenage things, because he's almost asleep when Colin leans over and taps his shoulder. 

"Hey," he says. Damian grunts. "Remember when you kissed me?" 

"Oh god," Damian grumbles, and rolls onto his side. "Shut up." 

"No, Damian," Colin shakes his shoulder. "Seriously. I was an idiot, okay? I'm really s—" 

Damian sits up and glares. "Colin, just shut up!" he snaps. 

Colin wilts. "Oh," he says, and his cheeks burn red. 

* 

Damian calls Grayson to complain that Colin's being weird. 

"You're both fucking idiots," Dick says, and hangs up. 

* 

When Damian is thirty years old he puts on the cowl. He's sitting alone in his room, dressed in black with a bat on his chest. He runs his gloved fingers on him and tries not to breathe. It smells like sweat and Grayson and his father. 

He pulls the cape around himself and sits silently as the rain taps on his window. That's how Colin finds him and they're there together in the dark with nothing but the sound of the rain and Colin says, "I made dinner." 

"I'm not hungry," Damian whispers and as he breathes in his eyes sting. 

Colin leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms. He frowns and whispers back, "I know," then he walks into the room and puts his hands on the sides of Damian's face, pushing his thumbs up under the cowl. His hands are hot on Damian's rain-soaked skin and as he leans down and their lips meet, it's just a little easier to forget the reason he stood out in the rain, and the name of the man he saw etched into cold stone.


End file.
